gérer un parc informatique avec samba-ad et wapt

collectivité - conseil départemental

Managing a computer park using our two products, Samba-AD and WAPT, is possible! We explain it all in this feedback from one of our customers who works in the IT department of a Departmental Council. For security reasons, the name of the department is not disclosed. 

Présentation

The Departmental Council, which is located in the south of France, is composed of 2,500 workstations, a hundred remote sites and 3,500 agents. Soon, the department will acquire 5750 additional computer stations. 

10 000 postes administrés

+100 sites

7 membres de l’équipe

The department’s infrastructure

Today, the department will acquire the infrastructure of the colleges, which will add up to 5,750 workstations, including those of the teachers. The department will then manage more than 10,000 posts.

The IT department is composed of three divisions:

  • The support pole which manages the workstations, from the installation, to the deployment, to the follow-up and the installation of the applications.
  • The study pole where the project managers work (writing).
  • The infrastructure pole which manages the network server, the system and the security.

Implementation of Samba-AD

Initially, the IT team was using Samba 3 which did not do Active Directory. Together, the IT team built the infrastructure and reached the limits of Samba 3: they needed a domain, a GPO (Group Policy Object) etc.. After starting a Samba 4.0 infrastructure on his own, our contact needed help and found Tranquil IT. We then started working together in 2016. “With Tranquil IT, we consolidated, solidified and secured the infrastructure. We decided to take on support because internally we were using Samba-AD more and more, we needed support.”

The department is certified level 3 by the ANSSI. At the beginning of the installation of Samba-AD, the neighboring communities did not understand the choice because the neighboring teams did not know the product. Thanks to the success of Samba-AD, other communities are starting to implement Samba-AD and are delighted.

Testimonial

“Today, I feel that Samba-AD is more than a Microsoft AD especially with the help of Tranquil IT who has been very supportive.”

Infrastructure Engineer
Departemental council

 Samba-AD in everyday life

Samba-AD in everyday life GPO (Group Policy Object), strategies and to increase security on their domain. Per week, the team spends only 2 hours on Samba-AD thanks to the implementation of several automatisms that reduce the time spent on it. 
The department is very satisfied with Samba-AD as it meets all their needs and requirements and is not looking to change software.

Estimated gains with the use of Samba-AD

County councils are often reluctant to install Samba-AD because most do not have the internal resources to run the software, including knowledge of Samba. So they will go to a Microsoft managed solution that is well more expensive than Samba-AD even though they both meet more or less the same criteria. France Relance came to audit the computer system of our interlocutor and they did not succeed in thwarting the security flaws. This shows that it is a robust and powerful software even if it is very little used.

Setting up WAPT 

WAPT was only recently implemented in this department. Initially, the colleges were using the Discovery version of WAPT and the Department was using OCS, but very quickly reached the end of the tool. For example, when the centralization project came along: “We opted to upgrade to the Enterprise version because we needed many more stations and also a need to share tools.” explains our contact. The idea was to interface the two products WAPT and Samba-AD to scale up.
Here, the department does not use a single console but two consoles: one on the colleges and one on the Departmental Council to limit the risks and better secure the two infrastructures.

La phase test : 
Two colleges served as POCs, which represented about 350 positions. The POC lasted about 1 month and afterwards the Departmental Council provided training to get the hang of WAPT.

Estimated gains with WAPT

Before having WAPT, the department was using OCS but the team got to the end of the tool very quickly. Our interviewee gave us some examples:

  • When an employee leaves the community, he or she can no longer intervene or make updates to the packages. WAPT is therefore more secure.
  • The monitoring of the console and operation is comfortable.
    A considerable time saving is noticeable since they can see when opening the WAPT console if a package is well installed. Beyond the time saving, he talks about an efficiency gain. In WAPT it is possible to replay the installation of the package and also to check in real time if the package is well installed.

After training, their team relies heavily on our documentation en ligne, forum and takes a few hours of support for specific questions.

 The benefits of WAPT

The first benefit mentioned by our interlocutor is to have a computer park as homogeneous as possible and to have a follow-up of the Windows updates. 

At Tranquil IT, we like to know what our customers use the most. That’s why here are the most used features in the IT department:

  • Package Deployment
  • Reporting
  • Configuration audit and more precisely the local administrative rights on the stations

In conclusion, WAPT is a recent addition to the department and has already won over the IT department, which without WAPT would have had to find several tools to complement OCS. With WAPT, the team uses Windows updates, package tracking, audit tracking, and IT asset status. 

Retour d’expérience en vidéo

Retrouvez Yann Corai qui nous partage son quotidien avec WAPT. 

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